Neighborhood Family Practice expands Ridge Road Community Health Center with help of federal funds
by Frank Barnett

(Plain Press, February 2010) Neighborhood Family Practice (NFP), a non-profit pioneer of low-income health care in Cleveland, is undergoing a major expansion funded by $1.3 million in federal government stimulus dollars. Neighborhood Family Practice’s location in the Stockyards neighborhood and accessibility to residents in the surrounding communities helped them qualify for the federal funds.

NFP’s Director of Business Operations Laurel Domanski Diaz explains, “One of the concepts behind a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), one of its core values, is that the health center be in the community, to be accessible. We’re not downtown or in the suburbs. People can get to us easily. We’re on a public transportation line.”

Through use of the stimulus funds, a small storage room at Neighborhood Family Practice has already been transformed into a meeting room. The room offers a meeting space for a variety of purposes including patient advocacy groups such as We are the Uninsured.

The expansion with stimulus dollars will soon result in a hallway leading right into Dave’s Supermarket next door where patients can get their prescriptions filled at a low cost in Dave’s pharmacy.

What Neighborhood Family Practice provides for all ages is the deceptively simple concept of primary health care, a term only in use since the late 1970s. It encourages and allows people to regularly see a doctor, which is easy to put off if you don’t have insurance or are underinsured. In fact, even calling it “health care” implies a newer more comprehensive approach than just “medical treatment”.

The largely bi-lingual NFP staff also reaches out to the west side’s huge Hispanic population. A smaller NFP branch serves the Tremont neighborhood.

With poverty and costly health insurance, preventable conditions aren’t always dealt with in a timely fashion. Patients should come to a primary care doctor for routine physicals and for conditions such as a fever or earache. Individuals should not wait until the condition worsens necessitating a visit to the emergency room.

“If you do need something more specialized, Neighborhood Family Practice doctors can refer you to a specialist,” said Diaz. “But if you have something that comes up, they’re the first ones you go to, the ones that you know, the ones you’re comfortable with.” NFP determines what the patient can afford on a sliding scale so that everyone gets the care they need. Neighborhood Family Practice patients can usually be seen by a doctor right away.

NFP also counsels in family planning and infant care. They provide midwives so pregnant women get all the advice and assistance needed all the way through labor and delivery. They claim “a significantly lower rate of interventions and cesarean sections than national averages.”

The clinic has been established since 1970, though they moved from Storer Avenue a few years ago, taking over some unused space in the building Dave’s Supermarket had moved into, which used to be a Zayre’s store.

“Our previous Executive Director, Sally Tatnall, sometimes did her grocery shopping at Dave’s,” said Medical Director Ann Reichsman. “NFP had been feeling very crowded in the Storer location and one day Sally noticed that Dave’s did not take up the entire building. She asked to see the space that was available and decided that it was perfect for NFP’s expansion.”

Recent developments though have been even more dramatic. Only a year ago NFP was just getting by, expecting no major changes. Suddenly there was money to expand through some of Dave’s storage space, growing from 12,000 to 17,000 square feet.

“A majority of the expansion was funded through President Obama’s stimulus package,” said Diaz. “This is your stimulus dollars at work. Just a year ago we were in a much different situation. We weren’t talking about expansion, just talking about getting through this economic crisis.

“We’re not offering new services, but we’re able to offer our services to more people. We have to increase by 3,000 patients by July 2011. Now that we have more exam room space, we’re going to be hiring at least one more doctor and support staff.”

The expansion through the use of the stimulus dollars will help make this possible by providing funding to add five new exam rooms to the clinic during the month of February. The funding will also allow for all the health records to be computerized by July of next year.

A welcome addition to the drab surroundings outside in the coming year will be a mural along the plain side of the building, paralleling and enlivening Ridge Road. Youths participating in the Mural My Neighborhood Program at Cudell Fine Arts Center have created the mural tiles, which will soon be placed on the side of the building.

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